ORATION 




DELIVERED ON THE 



EIGHTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY 



BATTLE OF MIKISIM, 

At Goshen, July 22, 1862, 



DEDICATION OF A MONUMENT 

Ere&ed by the munificence of 

Dr. Merrit H. Cash, in Memory of the Patriots 

who fell in that Battle. 




BY JOHN C. DIMMICK. 



ORATION 



DELIVERED ON THE 



EIGHTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY 



i i i 



At G-oshen, July 22, 1862, 




J.. 



DEDICATION OF A MONUMENT 

Erected by the munificence of 

Dr. Merrit H. Cash, in Memory of the Patriots 

who fell in that Battle. 



BY IOHN C. DIMMICK. 



MIDDLETOWK N. Y. : 

THE "PRESS" PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT, EXCHANGE BUILDING. 
. 1862. 






& : 



I 

cr— 



OEATION. 



Fellow Citizens : I am to address you to-day in honor of the 
dead. I am to speak not only of those brave men who laid down 
their lives for the Government we possess and the homes we enjoy, 
but of those men also who, forty years ago, met where and as we 
now meet, and for a like purpose. I am to speak, as it were, in obe- 
dience to the command of the dead, whose will, so manifest and 
generous, we meet this day to execute. 

But I am also to speak to an asssmblage of freemen, convened 
for such solemn services in a period of their national history, when 
the Government is called upon to undergo what all nations must 
submit to first or last — struggle and grapple for its very life ; and, 
while so struggling, demonstrate to the world, not only the strength 
of Democracies, but the ability and will of such form of Governments 
to maintain themselves at every hazzard and to the bitter end. I am 
to speak to living men of living questions, though I am quite sen- 
sible that in speaking of these, I am, as it were, " to tread upon fires 
that have not yet collected cinders enough to cover them." 

But, fellow-citizens, I have no idea that the men of the next 
generation, in reviewing the proceedings of this day, shall be justified 
in saying that we did not comprehend the nature of the crisis in the 
midst of which we are, or the spirit of the age in which we live; and 
while I trust no thought will arise or word be uttered inappropriate 
to the solemnity of the occasion, I trust such words shall be uttered 
as, in the judgment of posterity, shall put us all " right on the record." 

To an exact and thorough comprehension of the character of 
the men, and the debt we owe them, whose memories we are assem- 
bled this day to commemorate, I regard it as peculiarly appropriate 
to look for a moment to the estimation in which they were held by 
the generation immediately succeeding them. 

On the 22d of July, 1822, (forty years ago this day,) the then 
active men of that period, of all callings and professions in life — to a 
number hitherto unprecedented in the country, (history says 15,000) 
— met where we are now, and formed in solemn funeral procession 
to inter the bones of those we so honor to-day. 



A Committee of Arrangements, previously appointed, had, on 
the 2Gth of June, 1822, published a formal notice of the time and 
place of interment, which I beg leave to read to you : 

"Funeral Procession. — The special Committee of Arrangements request 
and invite the clergy of the different denominations, all the military officers, the 
civil and judicial officers, surviving officers and soldiers of the Revolution, sur. 
vivors of the Minisink battle, all uniform companies and the different Masonic 
lodges, the Medical Society, gentlemen of the bar, and the principals, teachers 
and students of the different academies in the County of Orange, and particu- 
larly the surviving relatives of those who were slain in the Minisink battle, to 
attend in Goshen on the 22d proximo. Just and proper places will be assigned 
them in the funeral procession of that day. 

Thomas Waters, Gabriel N. Phillips, J. W. Carpenter, 

David R. Arnell, Henry G. Wisner, Committee. 

Goshen, June 26, 1822." 

Of the signers of this notice, but one brave oak alone (Major 
Carpenter) has withstood the storms of those forty winters. All 
of the others have gone before us, and joined that brave body of 
men whose bones they gathered with such great care, and interred 
with such appropriate solemnities. 

The members of that committee must have been all personally 
known to many now present. You, who knew them, are. well 
aware that the consideration in which they were held in their day 
was such as to make it eminently proper that they should have been 
the committee for so great and important an occasion. I knew them 
all by reputation, some of them personally. Among them we rind 
the name of David K. Arnell, whose memory will always be held 
by the members of the medical profession of this County in high 
honor. It was generally conceded that he stood at the head of his 
profession in his day. He was so assiduous in his attentions to the 
poor as well as the rich, that, upon his death, his cotemporaries, who 
knew him well, paid him the high compliment of declaring him to 
have been in his life " the friend of mankind." 

A very distinguished member of the profession to which I have 
the honor to belong, was also one of that Committee. He was one 
of those rare men whose, intellectual powers had been so assidu- 
ously cultivated and were so evenly balanced that they seemed to 
possess almost absolute dominion over his passions. His vast reason- 
ing powers were such that, disdaining all declamation and mere 
oratorical display, he would by the mere force of his logic carry 



his audiences, step by step, with safety and security to conclusions 
that were at first deemed impossible; and in listening to his great 
efforts at the bar, we were lost in admiration as we saw exhibited in 
him the vast stretch and compass of the human understanding. It 
is only at long intervals that the gentlemen of my profession are 
called upon to mourn the loss of a man so highly gifted and rarely 
endowed as was Henry G. Wisner. 

And on that occasion, too, was present — addressing that great 
assembly in words that deserve to be read, re-read and pondered by 
every generation of her people— a citizen of the County of Orange, 
who was indeed the ' old man eloquent.' 1 He was a man who, 
almost invariably in his public discourses or even private conversa- 
tion — so minute and comprehensive was his knowledge — appeared 
as if he had made the particular subject under consideration the 
special study of his life. Those particular fields of knowledge and 
science that other men cultivated as specialties, he seemed to have 
explored for the mere purpose of improving and embellishing his 
understanding ; and in listening to his most unpremeditated addresses, 
we wondered how even during his long life he had been able to ac- 
cumulate such vast stores of knowledge, wisdom and experience. 
And, crowning the whole, was that conscientious sense of duty and 
of right that would neither seek or accept power or place when it 
might by any possibility conflict with his exceedingly rigid sense 
of duty. Those of you who knew Dr. James R Wilson well will 
bear witness to the truth of what I say— though in contrasting the 
speaker of that day with the speaker of to-day, you may be re- 
minded, as I am, of the story of the young Ascanius following in 
the footsteps of the great chief, and of his unequal strides, haud 

PASSIBUS AEQUIS. 

Those were some of the men who, on the 22d of July, 1822, as- 
sembled here as we do now; and from the character of those I 
have named, some idea may be formed of what manner of men 
they were with whom these gentlemen united for the solemn duties 
of this day forty years ago. When such men united in paying 
great honor to the dead, succeeding generations may know from 
that fact alone that the dead so honored were noble in their lives 
and still nobler in their deaths; and an appeal to history will con- 
firm the judgment. 

In 1778, during the autumn before the invasion of Minisink, Brant 
—the "Monster Brant"— had perpetrated the horrible massacre of 



6 

Wyoming. It was at once seen that the next descent would proba- 
bly be on Minisink ; and to provide against such a calamity the Gov- 
ernment stationed during the winter succeeding the massacre of 
Wyoming, on the frontier of Minisink, for its preservation, a bat- 
talion of cavalry under the command of the brave Count Pulaski, 
who continued with his battalion protecting the frontier until 
February, 1779, at which period the necessities of South Carolina 
became so great in the Revolutionary struggle then pending, that 
the Government was compelled to order Count Pulaski's battalion 
to South Carolina to strengthen General Lincoln's army there ; and 
so it came to pass that from February, 1779, this County, with Mini- 
sink on its frontier, was left unprotected by the Government — its 
women and children exposed to the utmost barbarity of the savages 
and tories — in order that the State of South Carolina might be res- 
cued from the grasp of England and gathered into the folds of the 
American Union ! In other words — to state the case exactly as his- 
tory reveals the facts — the purchase money for South Carolina's in- 
dependence and admission to the Union was paid in part by your 
fathers with their lives on the battle field of Minisink ; for this fact 
is as well established as any other fact in history : That but for 
the inability of South Carolina to protect herself, and her call for 
troops from the North, Minisink would have been protected and the 
persons of its inhabitants secure. Tims, the simple statements of 
history sometimes present us with startling truths. 

Brant, on learning through his scouts that Count Pulaski and his 
battalion had been withdrawn from Minisink and sent to South 
Carolina, immediately determined to re-enact in Minisink the bloody 
tragedy of Wyoming ; and for that purpose he assembled his war- 
riors, and with about 300 of them traversed the woods from the 
Niagara to the Delaware. About 200 Tories joined this band of 
savages. A portion of his force Brant stationed and kept in reserve 
at Grassy Brook, a small tributary of the Delaware, now in the 
county of Sullivan ; and, detaching from the main body of his men 
a force of savages and tories adequate for the work, on the evening 
of the 19th and early morning of the 20th of July, 1779, these sav- 
ages and tories (more barbarous than the savages) proceeded to the 
execution of their infernal purpose. In the darkness of the night 
they closed around the dwellings of the peaceful settlers of Minisink. 
The first intimation conveyed to the sleeping inhabitants of the 
presence of the foe, was given by the flames proceeding from the 
burning dwellings in which they slept, and the simultaneous shout 



of the frightful war whoop of the savage. The work was per- 
formed in the usual manner of savage warfare : First the stealthy 
approach, then the lighted torch applied to their dwellings, and as 
the fires raged and lighted up the darkness around, and as the 
astonished and terrified inhabitants rushed from their dwellings, the 
savages with their wild yells and uplifted tomahawks rushed into 
the harvest of blood. All alike — matron and maid, sire and son, old 
age in its decrepitude and the tender infant in its sleep of innocence 
— fell on that wild night under the tomahawk of the savage or the 
knife and the rifle of the still more dreaded tory. 

Ten dwellings (a large settlement for that day) were burned up 
and destroyed, together with two mills. Their farms were laid 
waste; all the property of the settlement that the savages could 
remove and make available to themselves was carried away, and 
the rest destroyed. A few of the settlers escaped, and carried as 
rapidly as they could the intelligence to Goshen. Upon hearing 
the news the people of Goshen were aroused, and the determination 
was quickly formed to pursue the savages. 

At that time Dr. Benjamin Tusten was an eminent physician 
and surgeon of the town of Goshen, and also Colonel of the 
Militia. He immediately summoned the officers of his command 
and called for volunteers to meet him at Minisink the following day. 
One hundred and forty men met at the rendezvous ; among them 
were many of the leading men of the county. They finally de- 
termined to march in pursuit of the savages, though at the time 
well aware of their own great inferiority in point of numbers. They 
marched 17 miles that day, and the next morning were joined 
by Col. Hathorn, of Warwick, with a small body of men, when 
they renewed the pursuit. About 9 o'clock in the morning they got 
a first view of the red skins, on the eastern bank of the Delaware. 
Col. Hathorn being the senior colonel was at this time in command. 
Capt. Tyler, whose daughter and only surviving child is with us 
to-day, was sent out as a scout, and upon his return Col. Hathorn 
and Col. Tusten, ascertaining how vastly superior the enemy was in 
point of numbers, advised a retreat ; but they unfortunately per- 
mitted themselves to yield to the clamor of those under their 
commands and continued the pursuit. The particulars of this battle 
and massacre are so well and faithfully recorded by our departed 
friend, Mr. Eager, in his history of the County, and so eloquently 
and minutely described by Doctor Wilson in this place forty years 



ago, and are so well known by every citizen of the County, that 
I shall not on this occasion go over the details ; indeed, it could only 
be done by re-stating what was said on a former occasion. From 
the moment that Brant, with Indian cunning, contrived, without the 
knowledge of our people, to throw himself in their rear, their fate 
was sealed ; and the savages, after accomplishing this and succeeding 
in detaching about a third of Col. Hathorn's command and cutting 
them off from the main body, so that they could render no substan- 
tial assistance in the battle, then closed around the small but brave 
band and began the conflict. The Indians and tories outnumbered 
us five or six to one, and as they closed around our people con- 
fined them within about an acre of ground. 

The position then taken by our friends was that of cool, brave 
men, who put full trust and confidence in each other. They 
formed in a hollow square, and began the conflict on this side 
of the Delaware, and about opposite the mouth of the Lackawack, 
at 11 o'clock in the morning, just eighty-three years ago to-day. 
The battle continued from 11 in the morning until the going down 
of the sun; when, our people having exhausted their ammunition, 
and the guard of one corner of the square having fallen in the bat- 
tle, the savages were enabled to break in upon our lines, and the 
work of blood and slaughter was soon finished. 

The scene after this is to be imagined and not described. Those 
who could, escaped. Some of them were shot in attempting to cross 
the Delaware ; some were shot in the woods in their retreat ; some 
few got home, among whom was Col. Hathorn, who commanded 
the expedition, and who all his life enjoyed the confidence and esteem 
of the County, and was deservedly held in high honor for his faithful 
services on that occasion. At the erection of the Monument here 
forty years ago he was present and laid the comer stone. He was 
then eighty years of age, and his short address as delivered on that 
occasion is a model of eloquence and propriety. 

Col. Tusten no doubt fell a martyr to his nice sense of profess- 
ional duty. He was a surgeon of great skill and experience in his 
profession, and while the fight was. going on, kept fighting and col- 
lecting under a rock, where they would be least exposed, his 
wounded companions, and ministered to their wants ; and there is 
no doubt he continued so attending the wounded to the last, choos- 
ing to stay with rather than desert them. Such a life and such 



a death was a great honor, alike to the man and to the profession 
to which he belonged. 

In this battle only eighty men were actually engaged on our 
side, in consequence of a portion of the former getting detached 
from the main body ; and of those eighty men forty-four were killed. 
When they commenced the conflict, I have no doubt they expected 
to come off the victors. The mere inequality of numbers they evi- 
dently cared but little about, as is manifest by the fact of their con- 
tinuing the pursuit after this inequality was fully known; and 
their defeat on that occasion was not owing to their inferiority hi 
point of numbers, for their own personal bravery had more than 
counterbalanced this inferiority during all the day. Then ammu- 
nition, after lasting them from 11 in the morning until sundown, 
became exhausted, and they could do no more. 

Brant himself, in after years, acknowledged that this was the 
cause of their defeat, and that but for this their personal bravery 
and heroism would have carried them through and made them the 
victors. You will readily perceive that a body of men collected 
hastily, as they were, without any government depot of ammunition 
to draw from — each man compelled to rely upon such amunition 
as he had in his own house — would necessarily, after so long a 
struggle, be reduced to the extremity our people then were — to that 
of an army in the field without ammunition, and under the fire of 
the enemy. 

The barbarous manner of the death of many who were slaugh- 
tered on that occasion, united with the massacre of Wyoming the 
year before, rendered the name of Brant infamous. Brant himself, 
in after years — aware of the cloud that hung over him — while on a 
visit to the city of New- York, endeavored to justify, or at least 
excuse, some of his conduct on that occasion. He admitted that he 
killed Gabriel Wisner after the battle was over, but said that he found 
Wisner so severely wounded that he could not live or be removed, 
and that if he was left there alone the wild beasts would soon fall 
upon him and devour him; that upon conversing with him, he found 
Mr. Wisner was in the full possession of all his faculties, and that for 
a man so situated to be devoured by wild beasts was terrible ; and 
that, to prevent so horrid a death, he engaged Col. Wisner in conver- 
sation, and whde diverting his attention struck him dead with one 
blow. 

The statement is plausible, but I am constrained to doubt its 



10 

truth. The idea is entirely novel, and contrary to all experience, for 
an Indian warrior to kill a victim in order to save him from suffering. 
I do not believe that the next year after the massacre of Wyoming, 
the men who got up and headed the expedition that marched across 
the country, from Niagara to the Delaware — to surround in the night 
the dwellings of the residents of Minisink, and murder their women 
and children — immediately after the battle of Minisink murdered a 
foe on the field, in order to save him the agony of a more terrible 
death. I have no doubt Brant killed Col. Wisner after the battle, but 
not for tlie reason he stated. This conviction, in my mind, is 
strengthened by the fact, that the head of one of the families with 
which I am connected by marriage was in this battle, and was there 
killed; and the tradition and belief in the family of Capt. Benjamin 
Vail is, that he was basely murdered by a tory, as he sat upon a rock, 
bleeding from his wounds, after the battle. I have no doubt Col. 
Wisner and every other wounded man who survived the battle, and 
was murdered by the tories or savages, shared the same fate, and all 
from the same motive. It was the savage desire for a scalp, or the 
infernal hate of the tory, that caused the death of all such, and not 
this sort of barbarous mercy to which I have alluded. 

The position in which the bones of these men were found — 
when, forty-three years after the battle, a committee of the citizens 
of the county visited the battle-field — proved the manner of the death 
of most of them. Nearly all the bones were found on the very spot 
where the battle was fought, showing that they were either killed in 
the battle or so badly wounded that escape was impossible, and were 
killed on the field immediately after the battle. The bones of some 
few were found separate and alone in the woods, away from the 
battle-field, showing either that they escaped wounded from the field, 
and when they could go no farther laid down and died in the wilder- 
ness, or were discovered in their flight and murdered by their foes. 
The bones of one man Avere found in a position showing how man- 
fully he must have struggled for his life. He had evidently gone 
wounded from the battle, and had dragged his wounded and bleeding 
body through the woods, eluding the savages, until he found a 
crevice in the rocks to which he resorted for shelter and concealment. 
I have no doubt as he lay there on the rock in the wilderness after 
the savages were gone — with no voice or hand of mother, wife or 
child to comfort or assist him there alone with the christian's God — 
he manfully struggled and prayed for life; not for himself, (for the 
brave men who went out to this battle cared little for themselves,) 



11 

but for the loved ones at home. If the workings of his manly heart 
could then be seen, I have no doubt it would have shown his desire 
for life to be that he might again cheer by his presence, strengthen 
by his counsels, and support by honest, heaven-appointed, manly 
labor of his own the wife and the little ones at home, until his chil- 
dren in their turn were qualified and fitted for the race of life. The 
prayer of his big, brave heart for life, I have no doubt, was that with 
and for those so near to and dependent upon him, he might live a 
little longer in that course of life which God has appointed as the 
only enjoyable one for man — a life of labor and of love. 

But this was not to be. When this brave man lay down upon 
the rocks, his blood and his life flowed out rapidly together from the 
same wounds; his enfeebled body could rise no more. Even the 
added strength of delirium, which hunger, thirst and exposure 
doubtless produced, was unable to raise that stalwart frame from its 
couch of stone. It was for him the bed of death. Forty-three years 
afterwards his bones were found where he himself had thus placed 
them. The wild beasts of the forest even seemins; to respect them, 
until good and kind men, with great care, gathered, and with ap- 
propriate ceremonies interred, all that remained on earth of one so 
worthy and so brave. 

The hopes, the fears, the prayers and the death of one of those 
men were that of all who fell in that fierce conflict. They departed 
from their homes to battle for their firesides and their families; their 
hope was to return after the conflict with peace secured. They se- 
cured the peace, but not for themselves; they paid the purchase 
money, but we enjoy the purchase. The rich valleys, the cultivated 
hills, the broad rivers, the wonderful abundance of this great land 
is ours to-day — with life, and health, and friends for the enjoyment 
of it all; the loss of all these, with death, was for them. 

" For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 

Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; 
No children run to lisp their sire's return, 

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share." 

Forty -three years from the time of their deaths the Monument 
was erected in a manner alike honorable to two generations — those 
who erected it and those in whose honor it was erected ; and now 
at the end of forty years, again we are here, in obedience as it were 
to a voice calling upon us from the grave, to re-erect this Monument 
with suitable rites and ceremonies. 



12 

On the 25th clay of November, 1860, Dr. Merrit H. Cash, by 
his last will and testament, dated on that day, among other things, 
provided and declared in these words : 

" I give and bequeath to the Supervisors of Orange County Four Thousand 
Dollars, in trust for the County, to be applied under their official sanction and 
direction when acting as a board, in or towards the erection of a Monument, in 
Goshen, to the memory of the patriots who fell in the ' Minisink Battle '; and 
as the object contemplated is one in which the county must necessarily have and 
feel an interest, 1 take it for granted that no part of the money will be expended 
in paying for the services of committees, commissioners or agents, but that all 
such outlays will be considered, allowed and paid as county charges — the money 
to be paid on the official order of the said Board of Supervisors within eighteen 
months after my desease." 

My satisfaction is heightened to-day by the consideration that 
our departed friend, in making this bequest, left no relative or other 
person surviving who could justly stand up and say that this bequest 
has deprived him of a provision which the protection owing to him 
by the deceased, or good conscience, required the testator to make 
in his behalf. On the contrary, all through this will the testator, 
with wonderful care, provided for those to whom he was bound by 
the ties of consanguinity, and after such provision for them as his 
sense of justice and duty taught him was proper, he made, for the 
honor and credit of the county in which he was born and died and 
always lived, the bequest I have read. The Monument itself bears 
evidence to the good judgment of our departed friend in this, that he 
adapted means adequate to all the ends desired to be accomplished. 
It was in truth a munificent donation, considering the object and the 
amount devoted to it. 

I know of no better way of determining the liberal and generous 
nature of a gift than by ascertaining if possible what the gift cost the 
giver ; and if any person is disposed to doubt the exceeding liberality 
of this bequest, let him consider, coolly and dispassionately, the case 
of a man who, in early life, by close study and application, qualifies 
himself to practice in the profession of a physician, and then enters 
upon the practice of his profession, performing the great labor for 
the comparatively small compensation awarded to the medical pro- 
fession in the country. Let him consider the case of such a man, 
year after year, through a reasonably long life, devoting himself by 
day and by night, in sunshine and in storm, in summer and winter, 
to the duties of his profession; visiting alike the poor and the rich, 
and gathering together by honest industry in this hard field of labor 



13 

the amount of this bequest, and then let him say whether the gift 
of it to a great public object, though in no way concerning him 
more than any other citizen, was not a munificent donation. 

I have no doubt that our departed friend, Dr. Cash, when he 
drew and executed this will and made this very liberal bequest, was 
well aware that his time on earth was to be short ; and after a life of 
honest labor and usefulness here, he meant when he joined the early 
fathers of his native County on the other shore, to assure them that 
the memory and the recollection of their great deeds was duly cared 
for here— if he should find that the spirits of just men made perfect, 
in their great field of intelligence and enjoyment, thought or cared 
anything for that small measure of fame which we denominate im- 
mortality on earth. 

The Monument is erected ; the will of the deceased, in its ample 
and generous provisions, has been faithfully carried out. Long after 
each and all of us shall be gathered into the harvest by that great 
reaper, Death, we trust that the marble shall stand a monument of 
honor to so many different generations. 

And having in its erection thus discharged the solemn duty im- 
posed upon us, we might, under ordinary circumstances, bring the 
proceedings of this day to a close ; but it so unfortunately happens 
that we are assembled for the performance of these solemn services 
at a period and under circumstances in the history of our country 
such as have never before happened, and such it is confidently 
expected will never be permitted to occur again. No nation ever 
could survive a second affliction such as that now visited upon us. 
And while we erect the monument of marble, it becomes us — meet- 
ing as we do in the midst of this great rebellion — to consider and 
determine whether the monument of marble is all the monument 
that is to be erected by the men of this generation, either in honor 
of the dead or in vindication of themselves. 

I take it that a son who leads a life of industry and of honesty, 
manfully discharging the duties that the day and age in which he 
lives imposes on him, does, in and by such a life, erect a monument 
to the memory of his ancestors better far than the monument of 
marble ; such a life is the monument of gold. Shall we not erect 
this Monument also in vindication of ourselves and to the memory of 
the men who died in Liberty's first great struggle on our Western 
Continent. 



14 

My Countrymen, for us to meet to-day, with our surroundings, 
and not look squarely in the face the difficulty and the duty : for us 
to meet here over this great tomb of the martyrs to liberty, without 
devoting, as we stand by their graves and over their bones, all that 
we have and all that we are to the government of the country, in 
this its great struggle for life, in my judgment would be impious. 

When I speak of devoting our all to the support of the General 
Government of the country, I do not use this general form of ex- 
pression without attaching to it in every sense the exact idea which 
the language imports. As the clouds lower and the struggle in- 
creases in violence and intensity, our disposition and willingness to 
make great sacrifices must increase also, and in the same proportion ; 
we must cultivate the disposition to make great sacrifices, as the good 
of the nation shall from time to time require, for this is the dictate 
of interest as well as duty — so true is it that in all the important, 
indeed I may say in all the exigencies of life, interest and duty 
are inseparably connected. Our interest is so great in the mainte- 
nance of the general government of the country, and in the union 
of the states, that to contemplate its disruption is equivalent to 
removing the citizens of this intelligent and christian nation of ours 
from their cultivated fields, their towns, their cities, and their pleas- 
ant homes, and by one fell swoop transplanting them in a sterile 
wilderness, and rolling back on such a people an irresistible tide 
of heathen ignorance and barbarism. 

I would not be regarded on this occasion as over-estimating or 
exaggerating the value of this government, or the consequences to 
result from its disruption. The man, in my judgment, does not live 
insane enough, even in the wildest flights of a mad man's brain, to 
conjure up the ills certain to follow from the loss of the union of 
the states. 

I know it was customary at the beginning of this rebellion for 
some men to talk coolly and with apparent complacency about a 
government of separate states, having no common bond of union, 
each pursuing such course as its own selfishness or caprice might 
dictate. The proposition supposes that our inability to live under 
the best form of government that man has ever yet devised, without 
by proper force and punishment protecting the peaceful and punish- 
ing the rebellious, is evidence conclusive of our ability to live peace- 
ably and comfortably, with all our conflicting interests, without any 
government whatever. The proposition involves the idea that either 



15 

since our government was formed, or by the instrumentality of this 
rebellion, the dross of selfishness and cupidity has been entirely 
removed from the nature of man. No : the man who coolly con- 
templates the breaking up of this government, and supposes it pos- 
sible for any good in any form to come from it, is not only blind 
to the future but to the experience of the past. We have not only 
the experience of the fathers of the Revolution under the old 
Articles of Confederation — an experience which drove them in their 
despair to organize the present Government — but we have an expe- 
rience under the government itself since its formation, which de- 
monstrates its absolute necessity; as the judges say, it is no longer 
an open question, it is res adjudicata. 

It has been determined by actual experience under and since 
the formation of the Constitution of the United States, that without 
the power of the General Government to coerce and keep the sev- 
eral states within the limits of their appropriate spheres, all rights 
of property, all trade and commerce, all the peaceful pursuits of 
this great nation would be at an end. Let us for a moment examine 
the facts, and like wise men gather instruction from the experience 
of the past. 

Permit me to call your attention to a period in the history 
of this country when the fact first began to dawn upon the minds of 
leading men, that steam power was destined to be the great slave 
of man, and that in its application to boats on our great rivers and 
inland seas as an impelling power, a discovery had been made wdiich 
would enable any combination of persons to put the whole industry 
and labor of the country under contribution for their aggrandize- 
ment, if they could devise some scheme by which the exclusive use 
and benefit of this great discovery could be appropriated to them- 
selves. For this purpose the State of New- York was applied to, 
and in March, 1798, by its Legislature, granted to Robert R. Livings- 
ton, for twenty years, the exclusive right of making and using every 
kind of boat impelled by steam in all the waters within its territory 
and jurisdiction. In 1803, the same Legislature admitted Robert 
Fulton to share jointly with Livingston in this monopoly, and ex- 
tended it for twenty years from the 5th day of April, 1803 ; and in 
April, 1808, further acts were passed by the same Legislature, ex- 
tending the monopoly for thirty years, and forbidding any person 
to enter or navigate any of the waters of this State with a steamboat 
without a license from Livingston and Fulton, and afterwards 



16 

providing by another act for the forfeiture to Livingston and Fulton 
of any and all vessels found without such license navigating the 
waters of this State. 

The result was that for thirty years, by these acts, the exclusive 
right to navigate the waters of the State of New York by steam ves- 
sels was given to Fulton and Livingston, and any person, either a 
citizen of our own or any other State, navigating any of the waters 
of the State with a steam vessel, either for trade, commerce, or any 
other purpose, forfeited his vessel to Livingston and Fulton; and 
they were authorized by the acts I have referred to, to seize such 
vessel in the same manner as though it had been one of their own 
vessels forcibly taken from them. The State of Connecticut there- 
upon passed an act directing that no vessel should be allowed to 
enter her waters that had taken out a license from Livingston and 
Fulton to navigate the waters of the State of New York, and the 
State of New Jersey followed with an act declaring that if under 
the pretended authority of the laws of New York, any citizen of 
New Jersey should be restrained from using steamboats in going to 
and from the shores of New York and New Jersey, he should be 
entitled to an action in the courts of New Jersey for treble damages, 
with treble costs, against the party so acting in obedience to the laws 
of New York. 

The result to which such pride, jealousy and cupidity carried 
those ancient commonwealths that had so recently stood shoulder to 
shoulder in the great contest for their liberties, was that the perform- 
ance of an act which by the laws of New York was required to 
authorize a vessel to enter this state, prevented and actually inca- 
pacitated this same vessel from entering the waters of the state of 
Connecticut; and an act which the laws of New- York authorized — 
that is, the seizure of an unlicensed vessel in the waters of this state 
— rendered the person so obeying the laws of New- York subject to 
an action for treble damages and treble costs in the state of New- 
Jersey. 

The unavoidable consequence of these conflicting enactments of 
the different state Legislatures, was to destroy all commerce among 
the several states of this confederacy, by means of steam vessels ; 
and the effect was, that without the restraining, controlling power of 
the general Government to restrain these states from all such suicidal 
and retalitory legislation, and the revengeful feelings thereby created, 



17 

all commerce between the several states of this confederacy and 
among the citizens thereof was at an end. 

At this crisis the General Government did interfere, and in the 
exercise of its power and authority declared all these different stat- 
utes of these different states in restraint of commerce to be void ; and 
it also declared— that for all time to come the vessel that carried the 
stars and stripes at its mast and the license of the general govern- 
ment in its cabin, was free to navigate without impediment or re- 
straint, for commerce or for pleasure, all the waters within the ample 
domain of the United States. And so it happened that our great 
city of New York was made the commercial centre of the continent, 
because, and only because, the general government had the power to 
save it and us from the dreadful fate that threatened it under the 
conflicting legislation of the several states. 

The man, therefore, who, with these great lights of experience 
illuminating the wake of the past, regards it as possible for the ship 
freighted with our liberties and happiness to sail smoothly and safely 
between the Scylla and Charybdis of conflicting state legislation, 
interests and passions, without the pilot of the general government 
at the helm, is, in my judgment, either a madman or a fool. 

No, my appeal for the preservation of the Union and the crush- 
ing out of the rebellion, is foimded upon no mere sentiment, impulse 
or emotion, but on the fact taught us by experience, that in and with 
the existence and continuance of the general government is bound 
up all we have of property in the present, of peace in the future, 
and of hope for our children. In a word, all we have worth living 
for is wrapped up in and depends upon the existence of the general 
government of the United States. 

So I believe; and believing this, while I look upon this great 
struggle of the nation for its life, I feel that the interests we have in 
it are so great that we cannot afford to make any mistake, either in 
our judgment as to its cause, or as to the manner of disposing of it. 

In the war of words that continually din upon the ear in all the 
public places and thoroughfares frequented by the masses of our 
people, it has been the custom to charge first one and then another 
portion of citizens of this country with the guilt of this Rebellion, in- 
somuch that a stranger unacquainted with our people and govern- 
ment would— if he took all the allegations and complaints he heard 



18 

as approximating the truth — be constrained to believe that all classes 
of persons in the community had deliberately set themselves to work 
to bring about precisely the state of affairs in which we rind our. 
selves placed to-day: For he would hear one man say that the 
Democrats brought on the rebellion ; another would say no, the Dem- 
ocrats had nothing to do with it, it was the Republicans that are to 
blame for it all. Still another says not so, it was not the Republicans 
at all, but the Southern Politicians — the Fire-eaters— that brought it 
all on ; and yet another says no, it was not the Fire-eaters, but the 
Abolitionists, they caused all the trouble. 

The truth is, that the man who takes up and examines those 
materials which the historian must take for his guide when he seeks 
to hand down to posterity the true cause of this rebellion, will see 
that this cause was in none of the things I have named : Neither 
Democrats, Republicans, Southern Politicians or Abolitionists, singly 
or combined, produced this rebellion. They all of them had more 
or less to do with fixing the time of its outbreak, but history will 
absolve them from being its cause. The man who writes the true 
history of its cause, will take the Constitution of the United States 
in his hand and scan its provisions to ascertain the nature and powers 
of the government against which this rebellion was organized. He 
will then take the Constitution of the so-called Confederate States, 
knowing that the difference between the constitution they rebelled 
against and the constitution they themselves formed must necessarily 
be the cause and ground work of the rebellion; and after exam- 
ining the provisions of these constitutions and comparing the two 
together, the historian will discover that the men who formed the 
Constitution of the United States intended Liberty and Freedom 
to be the rule of the nation, and that they looked iorward to the 
gradual extinguishment of slavery throughthe action of the differ- 
ent states themselves ; while the men who formed the Constitution 
of the so called Confederate States intended Slavery to be the rule 
and Liberty the exception ; and that they intended this impossible 
thing : To construct a Republic resting upon Human Slavery for its 
basis and main support ! 

History then — history that can neither be bought nor sold — will 
record that, while the various political parties and prominent men of 
the day contributed by their action towards expediting or retarding 
this rebellion, yet were not the cause of the rebellion itself; or if 
the proximate cause, yet the great first cause — the causa causans, 



19 

as the lawyers say — the cause of all the causes, was Slavery. Such 
will be the record of history, such will be the judgment of posterity. 
Such, if we are thoughtful and prudent, will be our judgment to day. 

You remember when it first became apparent that this great 
struggle — which each of the great parties to it had been silently, and 
one of them, at least, (the North) unconsciously preparing for since 
the foundation of the Government — was to be forced upon this gen- 
eration. You remember how the North struggled to avoid the 
encounter, and save the bloodshed. You remember how their legis- 
latures proposed the repeal of all obnoxious laws — how we sent our 
leading men of all political parties to meet conferees from the Slave 
States to stop the impending war ; how we proposed that they at 
least should delay an appeal to violence and arms long enough to 
allow the sense of the people to be taken in a regular manner upon 
the question either of amending the constitution to meet the require- 
ments of the South, or, allowing them by a convention representing 
the people of the States, to separate themselves from the nation ; and 
though I have no doubt that neither of these things could have been 
accomplished, yet the manner in which these overtures of so many 
at the North, anxious for peace, were repelled, demonstrates as well 
the unrelenting and uncompromising spirit of Slavery as its anxious 
desire for violence and bloodshed. Substantially, and even in terms, 
was it declared by the. votaries of Slavery, that if the North would 
give them a sheet of white paper and permit them to write on it their 
own terms, they would not remain citizens to be protected by or owe 
allegiance to the Government as formed by Washington and Jefferson. 

As I call to mind the scene immediately preceding the fall of 
Sumpter; the demoniac haste and fury of the South — the imperturb- 
able calmness, not to say coldness of the North — I am reminded of 
the account you will remember as given by the great traveller, Du 
Chaillu, of his explorations in Africa. You recollect his statements 
concerning the wonderful monster he saw there in the most unfre- 
quented and silent recesses of the African wilderness. Its form was 
much like that of a man — its stature and strength that of a giant ; it 
never fled from the presence of man, but on the contrary, when his 
eye first fell upon it, it began to send forth its challenge for a conflict 
by beating its savage breast and uttering its tremendous roar — a roar 
so loud and terrible that it seemed almost to shake the trees of the 
forest. The huntsman must kill it at the first fire of his rifle; if he 
failed the beast would instantly rush upon him. Its strength was so 



20 

formidable that the rifle would bend and break like a twig in its 
grasp, and one blow of its large paw would crush in the skull and 
bones of its victim. 

Such, you remember, was the monster Gorilla, this traveler the 
first time saw in the wilderness of Africa. Monstrous as he justly 
supposed this animal to be that he there discovered, how would his 
amazement have been increased had he been transported to our con- 
tinent and placed in our midst just before the fall of Sumpter. He 
would have seen in the spirit of American Slavery, as it was then 
exhibiting itself, the monster Gorilla of the world, He would have 
seen it in the full development of its gigantic stature, standing in the 
wilderness of ignorance created by and for itself, beating its savage 
breast and uttering its dreadful roar, as it madly, in its God-forsaken 
rage, challenged the Government of the country and the Christian 
civilization of the age to a conflict that in its own nature must be the 
final struggle for life. 

We find ourselves to-day in the very midst of this conflict. In 
view of it, the practical question comes home to each one here, what 
is the lesson of the hour, what the duty of the occasion ? I answer, 
as we have erected the monument of marble, let us now in the 
future so walk in the path of duty that we shall erect also the monu- 
ment of gold. Does any one ask where is the path of duty, and 
say, Define exactly what you mean by this general form of expres- 
sion ? I answer, the path is so plain that we have no choice left if 
we desire to make one. 

A disruption of this Government involves the unavoidable ruin 
of all. The question of its preservation has been transferred for 
decision from the council chamber to the battle field ; if preserved, it 
can only now be done by vanquishing the rebels on the field of 
battle. It is a question of war, and war alone. We are at War ! 
Does this answer the question ? Is there any man who does not 
understand the duty of a citizen to his government in time of war ? 
My own understanding of such duty is, that the men of advanced 
years, the men in middle life, the men who have monies to invest, 
must see to it that their government while at war has all the pecuni- 
ary aid it desires ; they must see to it that its credit through defeat 
as well as victory is unimpaired to the last. To do this, they must 
invest their monies in its bonds, thereby keeping up its credit ; for 
the credit of the government once gone its power to raise and keep 
together its armies and navies is at an end. Men of means and 



21 

property ! remember that here again your duty and your interest 
run in the same direction. If you withhold your means and turn a 
cold shoulder upon the securities offered by the general Government, 
and by so doing impair its credit, until the whole fabric of the Gov- 
ernment falls about your head, what do you suppose, in that event, 
would be the value of your property or of your investments? If 
you have no faith in right, or in God, at least be persuaded to follow 
the dictates of interest. 

You remember when the banks loaned the fifty millions to the 
Government, all reflecting men agreed that it was the best invest- 
ment possible for the banks to make, and so it turned out ; it not 
only afterwards netted a profit in the market, but by strengthening 
the government and its credit preserved the value of all their other 
securities — so true is it that our interest and our duty are inseparably 
connected. 

The duty of supporting the government by investing in its 
securities, and in that manner supporting its credit, is not all ; for no 
combination of men or of wealth could support these securities or 
preserve the credit of the government, unless the men who compose 
the great laboring and producing classes in the community see to it 
that the government is furnished with the ready money to pay its 
interest and create a fund for the ultimate payment of its indebted- 
ness. This interest can only be paid and this credit only be preserved 
by taxes imposed directly upon the citizens and the property of the 
country. Our fathers fought the battles of the Revolution for the 
privilege of taxing themselves, and when they gave us liberty and 
free government they also gave us the means of preserving them 
by conferring on us the privilege for which they battled — the privi- 
lege of self-taxation ; and not the least gratifying of the signs of the 
times were the mutterings of dissatisfaction expressed by all classes 
and conditions of men, at the tardiness of the government in pro- 
viding by taxation for the continuance of its own existence. 

I know full well that a vigorous system of taxation imposes 
to a greater or less extent burdens upon a community ; but consider 
for a moment how much cheaper it is to bear the burdens of a free 
government than those soon to be placed upon us if we permit this 
government of ours to pass from under us. This government fail- 
ing, what will take its place, and what will they charge us who will 
then take upon themselves the task of ruling us and managing our 
affairs ? "We can only form some idea by comparison. 



22 

When Garibaldi insisted on the reconstruction of Italy and its 
rescue from Austrian rule and domination, he showed, as one of the 
grounds of complaint, and as a reason for her desiring, what we 
now possess — a free government — that a government of kings and 
aristocrats was costing more than she could afford to pay ; and the 
free people of this country were amazed when they discovered that 
the Empire of Austria charged the Italians for keeping them slaves 
sixty per cent, of all the annual earnings of the people, leaving only 
the other forty per cent, for the people at large, out of which they 
were to support themselves, provide for their families, and defray the 
expenses of all the industrial pursuits of the country. I don't won- 
der that Garibaldi thought a republican form of government, pur- 
chased at any expense, was cheaper than this. And here, too, it is 
quite obvious that upon this question of taxation our duty and our 
interest are again inseparably connected, as it is so much cheaper 
for us in a pecuniary point of view to support a free government 
than any other. 

I would crush out every effort, come from what quarter it may, 
to bring into disrepute a thorough and efficient system of taxation ; 
it is to-day the life blood of the nation. Napoleon once said there 
were two ways of supporting an army : one was to take by force 
everything you wanted — to steal it — and the other was to pay for 
everything you took; but experience, he said, had shown that the 
cheapest way in the end was to pay for everything you wanted. We 
shall know when this war is over which is right: the slave states 
steal as they go, and we pay for whatever we take. Let us see when 
tli is war ends which people are the best otf. 

There is another duty in addition to what I have mentioned, and 
that is the duty of furnishing the government with vigorous and 
able-bodied men for the army, and this duly rests primarily and with 
especial force upon the young men of the nation. I am not going to 
discuss this plain question of duty. Orange County must send her 
full quota of men. She is represented in almost every county of 
every state of the Union, and thousands of eyes are turned upon her 
to see what she will do in this crisis — turned with an interest of 
which you here at home can have no conception, to see what their 
native county is going to do for the country. To the young men of 
Orange I have only this word further to say : The liberties and gov- 
ernment of this country are going to be maintained; if you do not 
see fit to help maintain them, but prefer staying home with the wo- 



23 

men, in God's name let it be known quickly, for the old stock will 
then know exactly what is before them ; and my word for it, the 
work will be done, for I know the old stock of this county well. 

If there is any doubt as to the duty of this generation, let me 
beg of you to consider for a moment what would be the scene to-day 
if we could summon from the grave its tenants and cause to stand 
before us here the men whose memories we take so much pride in 
honoring on this occasion. If you could summon back then dry 
bones, reunited each in its appropriate place, clothed with the flesh 
and blood, the rounded form and beauty of life : If you could restore 
again the raven locks to their bleached skulls, the beaming eyes to 
their vacant sockets, and the truth-telling tongues to those death- 
locked jaws: If you could cause their cheeks again to glow with 
virtuous indignation at wrong, and kindle up with more than mortal 
beauty in commendation of right, what would then be their united 
counsel and command to us? Is there in all this vast assemblage 
any one man so entirely God-forsaken as not to know that, with one 
accord, they would proclaim to us as our duty those two magic 
words by which Wellington turned the doubtful field of Waterloo in 
his favor, as he rode furiously among his troops and said to them, 
"Stand Fast!" 



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